Business Management Productivity Tips and Tricks

How to Build a Successful Technical Support Service

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How to build an effective and efficient support service? Wondering how to make it helpful and valuable for your customers? Read this guide and discover the top 5 tips for successfully achieving this goal.

Technical support is an essential component of any successful business which provides technology-related products and services. It does not matter how great your solution is if customers are not able to get qualified technical support and are just sent some link to the knowledge base instead.

Such a state of affairs will result in negative customer experience and may even ruin your business. For this reason, it is vital that you do whatever it takes to build a world-class support service which will successfully and promptly resolve all customers’ issues.

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So what are the key things you must do to achieve this goal? Here are the five most important of them:

  • Use multiple channels for communication
  • Make help instant
  • Collect feedback
  • Follow-Up and thank your customers
  • Don’t send them self-help materials

Let’s see in detail how you can successfully implement each of these points.

Use Multiple Channels for Communication

It’s a big mistake to use only one channel of communication. It is sad to see that some of the most prominent and largest companies use only one or two channels of communication. For instance, some of the most popular web hosting providers provide support only by phone which irritates a lot of customers.

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Don’t commit the same mistake. Provide as many support channels as possible: phone, email, Skype, social media, etc. If you haven’t already signed up for the service, you should enable texts to your landline number as well. This will make getting support for your customers much easier and increase their overall satisfaction with your service.

Make Help Instant

That’s right, not quick help but instant help. A world-class support service responds to customers’ requests as soon as they are received. For instance, if you have live chat on your website respond to customers as soon as they send the first message. If you provide support by phone, don’t make them wait on the line, accept their calls instantaneously.

Collect Feedback

Constant improvement of your support service cannot occur unless you collect every customer’s feedback whenever a support ticket is successfully closed. This allows identifying areas which need improvement and also shows your customers that you truly care about them, that their opinion is important to you and that you constantly seek to improve.

Follow-Up and Say Thank You

After a ticket is closed, your work is not over. You should follow-up and ask your customers how they are doing, if they need any further assistance, as well as thank them and show them that you appreciate their using your support service. This will further improve customer experience and satisfaction with your company.

Don’t Send Them Self-Help Materials

Imagine the following situation – you contact a support service with some issue you have. They respond and send you a link to their knowledge base. What is the support service needed for then? If all the answers are in the knowledge base then why do we need technical support people at all? We can simply look up all the answers in the knowledge base, right?

The reason people contact support is not get referred to self-help materials. The reason they do it is to get help from the support staff, not to spend hours searching for the answer in the knowledge base. Therefore, by all means, stop sending people self-help links and provide them with detailed answers yourself.

Conclusion

No business which deals with technology can succeed without a great technical support service which customers are satisfied with. Your company is no exception. If you want to stay competitive and keep your business successful it is your direct obligation to make sure that customers receive instant and qualified assistance.

It is also a great idea to collect feedback after closing every ticket and follow up on each and thank customers for turning to your support service. Another option is to simply outsource technical support to one of Ukrainian IT companies such as CyberCraft Inc. which provides dedicated technical support services to clients around the globe. Doing all of this will allow building a real world-class technical support service which your customers will love.